Thursday, April 28, 2005

The Great White Peril

Y'know, by Gar, there may be some good come out of this Minuteman thing yet.

Fresh after hanging up their lassos and sidearms and calling it quits by declaring victory well before the end of their originally avowed 30-day vigil, the Minuteman Project's organizers, according to the Washington Post, are turning their sights northward to the Canadian border:

Minuteman Project leaders said their volunteers this month alerted federal authorities to more than 330 cases of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States over a 23-mile stretch of Arizona's southern border. Now they plan to extend their patrol along the rest of the border with Mexico and are helping to organize similar efforts in four states that neighbor Canada.

"In the absence of the federal government doing its mandated duty to secure our borders, we will pick up the slack. Reluctantly," said Chris Simcox, a Minuteman co-organizer who also operates Civil Homeland Defense, another Arizona group that monitors illegal immigrants.

"We shouldn't have to be doing this," Simcox told reporters in Washington, where he was to meet with lawmakers Wednesday. "But at this point, we will continue to grow this operation _ also to the northern border."

Simcox offered no timeline on when the Canadian border patrol _ to be organized in Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota and Vermont _ might begin. But he said he hoped to start patrols near San Diego, Calif., by June and along the rest of the Mexico border by October.

I read this and I thought: At last! Someone is going to make us face up to the real threat facing this country! Maybe now we can begin talking about the Great White Peril!

Now I know that all this talk by the Minutemen about clamping down on the Canadian border too is in most regards a kind of cover for the campaign's claims to be primarily concerned about the threat posed by terrorists crossing our supposedly loose borders. After all, the only known terrorist who entered the United States via a border crossing -- Ahmed Ressam, whose case is well known locally -- did so from Canada.

But let's be honest here: The real cause that fueled the Minuteman Project was immigration, not terrorism. That's evident from the focus on the subject at the group's Web site, as well as places that championed it, from VDare to American Patrol to the Aryan Nations (which, in fact, actually lauded the 9/11 attacks). And if you talked to people on the ground at the Project, it was pretty clear what was driving them too: the Brown Peril.

So we should be equally frank about what the objectives should be for any planned watch along the Canadian border: stopping the similarly noxious flow of white illegal immigrants from the north.

After all, these people are whiter than white. They like hockey and curling and ice fishing and eat lots of cheese. They come sneaking here over the border in silent hordes and pretty soon, they start taking over. Nobody talks about it, but the evidence that it's happening is everywhere.

I mean, look around at all these American cities near the Canadian border: White people. Lots of white people everywhere. And way too many of them still saying, "Eh?" And why are there all those cheese shops?

They're infecting our popular culture, too, by exporting Canadian-ness over the borders. Why, exactly, are we playing hockey (when it's not on strike) in Florida and California nowadays? Doesn't that seem suspicious to you?

And then there's the music scene. For awhile Canada exported hippie subversives like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, then homosexual subversives like k.d. lang. Now, however, they're responsible for the most insidious cultural invasion of all: Celine Dion. It doesn't get much more hair-raisingly white than that. (Indeed, it seems like grounds for invading their country, executing their leaders, and converting them to Christianity, but that might be a bit over the top.)

Oh, I know it's not "politically correct" to point out this kind of cultural pollution. But it's happening, slowly, surely, and demonstrably to the detriment of our society.

It's time somebody did something about it. Of course, completely sealing off the Canadian border will entail manning some of the most rugged and frigid territory in America, a landscape that will make the Arizona desert seem like a Sunday in the park. It'll require lots of high-tech equipment and well-trained, fit participants.

But hey, I'm sure the Minutemen will be up to the task. They were successful before, right?

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.